He lit up the screen in the 80s – but things did not go as planned. As he takes on Chekhov, Everett speaks about stardom, midlife crises and penis padding
Rupert Everett is directing his first play and a few unfortunate incidents have occurred before opening night. It is David Hare’s new version of Uncle Vanya, in which Everett also stars, and all did not go as planned in its first preview. “In a fight scene I elbowed the leading actor, John Light [who plays Dr Astrov],” says Everett. “He really hurt his eye and had to go to hospital. He came back and then, leaning around the stage with his one eye, he fell off it and really hurt his leg.”
The play’s opening has been pushed back a week, until Light is back on his feet, but if this production returns Chekhov’s 1898 play to the farce that Everett says it was written to be, and not a straightforwardly bleak tale of midlife ennui and angst, then the mishap has an edge of black humour, too.
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